How To Maintain A Start-Up Culture As Your Company Scales

Congratulations! You made it, most start-ups never get that far, but there is a downside. The more successful businesses become the more complacent they tend to get and somewhere along the line, the spirit of innovation is lost. As your business grows larger you run the risk of your size tying you down through bureaucracy. This means it is critical that you embed the spirit of your start-up in the company’s DNA. This is a guide on how not to lose your start-up spirit.

Continue to innovate

One way to make sure you maintain an entrepreneurial spirit is through innovation and this means allowing everyone to contribute ideas as your company grows. One way you can do this is by creating an anonymous inbox to which employees can send their ideas. This can impact the way the company operates on a day-to-day basis because ideas can be generated by both executional and operational staff and don’t depend on leadership. Make sure you retain the flat structure that defines start-ups and get rid on any intimidation that tend to beset larger organisations.

Build a bond with your staff

If you want to maintain a flat structure you need to stay close to your employees, know their names and listen to how they want to work. Try and avoid becoming overly corporate. People seek to wok at start-up’s because they want to experience their energy, agility and creativity. Innovation is defined as being the creation of ideas and ideas are generated by people. This means you need to invest in your people and develop an understanding of what is important to them so that you nurture the talent necessary to transforming your business.

Use it or lose it

The most important thing when it comes to nurturing talent is acting as a guide. You need to constantly remind your team of the company vision and ensure they understand that their work is both shaping and changing the business. Scaling a business is not easy but it is really important to hire the right people, give them reasonable expectations and cultivate a tightly-knit culture regardless of how big you become. If you can do that then you will without question remain just as agile as you were in the beginning.